Dave Stockdale
Sustainability Honcho
Cattle call
SFGate.com
I was enjoying a meat-centric meal at a local restaurant a few days ago with some friends when someone brought up the film Food, Inc. So we ended up discussing the dark side of meat production while...
I was enjoying a meat-centric meal at a local restaurant a few days ago with some friends when someone brought up the film Food, Inc. So we ended up discussing the dark side of meat production while enjoying our nicely prepared pastured beef short ribs. If you also saw this film, then what follows will not be new. And yet, it never hurts to remind ourselves of some of the issues and concerns.
As the aforementioned movie revealed for many previously unaware folks, the idyllic vision we have of cows grazing on open fields under blue skies is not a very realistic picture of cattle production today. While many cattle in the United States do begin their lives on relatively small, family-owned ranches with ample amounts of pasture or rangeland, the vast majority of cattle end their lives in large, overcrowded feedlots. In many feedlots, their diet switches to grains and other products such as flesh, bones, hooves, and feathers of other animals, chicken or cattle manure, stale pastry, ground cardboard, and even plastic hay.
Cattle are a ruminant (or cud-chewing) species, as are goats, sheep, and bison. Their specialized digestive system has evolved over millennia to digest the biodiversity of grasses found on pastureland. When ruminant animals such as cattle are fed a grain-based diet, it can cause them a range of health problems, so they are often administered antibiotics to fend off the diseases they might contract under these conditions. The cattle are also often given growth hormones to make them grow bigger faster.
Not all grain-fed cattle are subject to the worst feedlot conditions. Some feedlots are less crowded and are managed without the use of antibiotics or hormones. Some facilities feed their cattle only grain and other foodstuffs (a typical diet might include barley, corn, wheat, soy meal, sugar beet pulp, cane molasses and hay) without all the fillers and questionable by-products. Feedlots producing certified organic dairy products or beef must follow guidelines that include feeding the animals certified organic grain, avoiding antibiotics and hormones, and providing some access to pasture.
In addition to the effects on animal health, the feedlot system also has some serious environmental impacts. Overcrowding of animals produces excessive amounts of manure that cannot be recycled on site. Runoff from this manure creates an excess of nitrogen in watersheds. Methane gas produced by cattle contributes to global warming. The large-scale industrial production of grain to feed the animals includes high usage of pesticides and herbicides and the widespread use of genetically engineered seed.
The feedlot system also has social consequences. As commodity prices for beef and dairy products are driven down, small family-owned ranches are often driven out of business. Those that do manage to stay afloat generally work on contract with a few large corporations, greatly limiting their autonomy, financial security, and opportunities for growth. Feedlots themselves can be toxic environments for the workers who operate them and smelly eyesores for the communities that house them. Slaughterhouses can be dangerous for workers when speed and production are considered more important than safety.
Keeping cattle on open rangeland or pasture from birth until death is an alternative to the feedlot system. Because cattle eat the diet that is biologically appropriate for them and their digestive systems, the health problems outlined above are eliminated. The negative environmental and social consequences are lessened too. Research is also showing that there are also significant health advantages to eating dairy products or beef from pasture-raised animals.
I don't eat animal protein every day, but when I do, I buy ingredients or seek out menu items that feature pastured animals whenever possible. It's my way of supporting a production system that I believe is better for me, the animals, and the planet. That fact that these products also taste better and have a more interesting texture to me is an added bonus!
This blogger from San Francisco learned everything about modern livestock production from watching the movie Food Inc. and is eager to share it. Line by line you can go through this article and see how this mockery of a film has misinformed consumers. For example, according to this guy every feedlot is overcrowded. On more than one occassion he refers to overcrowded feedlots. He also mentions that most family farmers and ranchers that raise beef are doing it for a large corporation. Nothing could be further from the truth. The next time you don't feel like sharing your story consider the idea that this guy is eager to share your story for you and it's apparent that he's not concerned about the truth.
Showing posts with label organic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label organic. Show all posts
Friday, August 13, 2010
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Media Overhyping Organics
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
STUDY FINDS MEDIA MAY BE OVERHYPING BENEFITS OF ORGANIC FOOD, AGRICULTURE
Kansas State University
MANHATTAN -- News accounts of organic agriculture and organic food are more likely to be positive than negative and inaccurately claim organic food is safer, according to Kansas State University's Doug Powell.
Powell, an associate professor of food safety, is the co-author of "Coverage of organic agriculture in North American newspapers: Media -- linking food safety, the environment, human health and organic agriculture," just published in the British Food Journal.
The paper is based on a study Powell conducted from 1999-2004 with two colleagues at the University of Guelph in Canada, Stacey Cahill and Katija Morley. Cahill was one of Powell's students at the time.
The team explored how topics of organic food and agriculture were discussed in five North American newspapers. Using the content analysis technique, the 618 articles collected were analyzed for topic, tone and theme regarding food safety, environmental concerns and human health.
The prominent topics of the articles were genetic engineering, pesticides and organic farming, Powell said.
The analysis found 41.4 percent of the articles had a neutral tone toward organic agriculture and food, 36.9 percent had a positive tone, 15.5 percent were mixed and 6.1 percent were negative, Powell said.
"We concluded that articles about organic production in the selected time period were seldom negative," he said. "Organic agriculture was often portrayed in the media as an alternative to allegedly unsafe and environmentally damaging modern agriculture practices. That means organic was being defined by what it isn't, rather than what it is." Read More
This is an interesting look at how the media rarely uses objectivity in their reporting any more. They have been more than happy to just jump on a bandwagon of untruths about modern agriculture. There is no doubt that all production systems have a place in agriculture, that’s not the point of this discussion. The point is that the media is failing their clientele with their preference to unobjectively follow trends rather than inform their readers. ~Troy
STUDY FINDS MEDIA MAY BE OVERHYPING BENEFITS OF ORGANIC FOOD, AGRICULTURE
Kansas State University
MANHATTAN -- News accounts of organic agriculture and organic food are more likely to be positive than negative and inaccurately claim organic food is safer, according to Kansas State University's Doug Powell.
Powell, an associate professor of food safety, is the co-author of "Coverage of organic agriculture in North American newspapers: Media -- linking food safety, the environment, human health and organic agriculture," just published in the British Food Journal.
The paper is based on a study Powell conducted from 1999-2004 with two colleagues at the University of Guelph in Canada, Stacey Cahill and Katija Morley. Cahill was one of Powell's students at the time.
The team explored how topics of organic food and agriculture were discussed in five North American newspapers. Using the content analysis technique, the 618 articles collected were analyzed for topic, tone and theme regarding food safety, environmental concerns and human health.
The prominent topics of the articles were genetic engineering, pesticides and organic farming, Powell said.
The analysis found 41.4 percent of the articles had a neutral tone toward organic agriculture and food, 36.9 percent had a positive tone, 15.5 percent were mixed and 6.1 percent were negative, Powell said.
"We concluded that articles about organic production in the selected time period were seldom negative," he said. "Organic agriculture was often portrayed in the media as an alternative to allegedly unsafe and environmentally damaging modern agriculture practices. That means organic was being defined by what it isn't, rather than what it is." Read More
This is an interesting look at how the media rarely uses objectivity in their reporting any more. They have been more than happy to just jump on a bandwagon of untruths about modern agriculture. There is no doubt that all production systems have a place in agriculture, that’s not the point of this discussion. The point is that the media is failing their clientele with their preference to unobjectively follow trends rather than inform their readers. ~Troy
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Report Backs Non-Conventional Practices
National council report backs sustainable food
Carolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
(06-30) 04:00 PDT Washington - -- The prestigious National Research Council threw its considerable heft behind the sustainable food movement Tuesday with a 570-page report that endorses the new food and farm practices that began in the Bay Area and have taken the nation by storm.
There are now twice as many farmers - 30,000 to 40,000 - selling local meat and produce in farmers' markets than there are growing cotton, a major industrial crop, said August Schumacher, an author of the report and a former undersecretary of agriculture in the George H.W. Bush administration.
"This is not just San Francisco, Boston and New York," Schumacher said of what has been called alternative agriculture but is fast going mainstream - everything from the locavore, organic and "slow food" movements to animal welfare advocacy. "It's Kansas City. It's Boise, Idaho. It's Abingdon, Va."
External costs
While the industrial farm model has generated astonishing efficiency gains and lowered the cost of food, the report found, it has imposed enormous external costs on the environment, human health, animal welfare and workers that are not included in the price of food.
Julia Kornegay, the chair of the committee that wrote the report and chair of the department of horticulture science at North Carolina State University, said the industrial farm system has become increasingly fragile and prone to outside shocks such as a sudden increase in oil or feed prices, water shortages or concerns about food safety.
Produced by a dozen academic and industry leaders and funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the report squares off against a growing backlash by proponents of industrial agriculture to what they see as a utopian and romanticized vision of pastoral life that would take food production back to the 19th century and starve the world.
"A post-materialist fantasy," is what Robert Paarlberg, a member of the Board of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the National Research Council and a leading food policy academic, has called the new food movement.
Paarlberg says the new food movement is playing out on Africa's small, impoverished farms, where most of the continent's people earn $1 a day, where 80 percent of the labor is done by women and children, where animals forage, insecticides and herbicides are unaffordable and food imports are the only barrier to starvation. Read More
Here is what this article says, America’s farmers and ranchers had done an incredible job of feeding our country and others at the most affordable price in the world, BUT, that needs to be changed. Their claims that food production is too vulnerable to things like high oil prices are an extremely narrow point of view. That doesn’t justify families having to pay much higher food prices all the time. When inputs go up, so do prices. No type of farming will prevent that.
Here’s another thing that seems apparent. The people that were studying this issue went into it with the pre-conceived bias that the current food production system is bad and needs changed. You can tell this by the broad statements made such as the environment needs to be protected. I don’t know anyone that’s involved in agriculture that doesn’t care about the soil and water that generate their livelihood. I get tired of hearing people say that I don’t care about things like that. I don’t care what type of production system you use, if you don’t care about things like that you will be out of business very quickly.
A well-fed society neglects it’s agriculture. Those words have never been more true than they are today.
Carolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
(06-30) 04:00 PDT Washington - -- The prestigious National Research Council threw its considerable heft behind the sustainable food movement Tuesday with a 570-page report that endorses the new food and farm practices that began in the Bay Area and have taken the nation by storm.
There are now twice as many farmers - 30,000 to 40,000 - selling local meat and produce in farmers' markets than there are growing cotton, a major industrial crop, said August Schumacher, an author of the report and a former undersecretary of agriculture in the George H.W. Bush administration.
"This is not just San Francisco, Boston and New York," Schumacher said of what has been called alternative agriculture but is fast going mainstream - everything from the locavore, organic and "slow food" movements to animal welfare advocacy. "It's Kansas City. It's Boise, Idaho. It's Abingdon, Va."
External costs
While the industrial farm model has generated astonishing efficiency gains and lowered the cost of food, the report found, it has imposed enormous external costs on the environment, human health, animal welfare and workers that are not included in the price of food.
Julia Kornegay, the chair of the committee that wrote the report and chair of the department of horticulture science at North Carolina State University, said the industrial farm system has become increasingly fragile and prone to outside shocks such as a sudden increase in oil or feed prices, water shortages or concerns about food safety.
Produced by a dozen academic and industry leaders and funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the report squares off against a growing backlash by proponents of industrial agriculture to what they see as a utopian and romanticized vision of pastoral life that would take food production back to the 19th century and starve the world.
"A post-materialist fantasy," is what Robert Paarlberg, a member of the Board of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the National Research Council and a leading food policy academic, has called the new food movement.
Paarlberg says the new food movement is playing out on Africa's small, impoverished farms, where most of the continent's people earn $1 a day, where 80 percent of the labor is done by women and children, where animals forage, insecticides and herbicides are unaffordable and food imports are the only barrier to starvation. Read More
Here is what this article says, America’s farmers and ranchers had done an incredible job of feeding our country and others at the most affordable price in the world, BUT, that needs to be changed. Their claims that food production is too vulnerable to things like high oil prices are an extremely narrow point of view. That doesn’t justify families having to pay much higher food prices all the time. When inputs go up, so do prices. No type of farming will prevent that.
Here’s another thing that seems apparent. The people that were studying this issue went into it with the pre-conceived bias that the current food production system is bad and needs changed. You can tell this by the broad statements made such as the environment needs to be protected. I don’t know anyone that’s involved in agriculture that doesn’t care about the soil and water that generate their livelihood. I get tired of hearing people say that I don’t care about things like that. I don’t care what type of production system you use, if you don’t care about things like that you will be out of business very quickly.
A well-fed society neglects it’s agriculture. Those words have never been more true than they are today.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Study Shows Grain Fed Beef Healthier Than Grass Fed
Study Shows Ground Beef From Grain-Fed Cattle Healthier Than Grass-Fed
05/27/2010 10:49AM
COLLEGE STATION – Grass-fed beef may not have as many healthful traits as some perceive, according to results from a recent Texas AgriLife Research study.
Dr. Stephen Smith, an AgriLife Research meat scientist, and a team of researchers have found that contrary to popular perception, ground beef from pasture-fed cattle had no beneficial effects on plasma lipid.
However, high monounsaturated fat ground beef from grain-fed cattle increased HDL cholesterol, increased LDL particle diameters, and decreased insulin, suggesting that ground beef produced by intensive production practices provides “a healthful, high-quality source of protein.”
"We wanted to see from this study if product from pasture-fed and corn-fed cattle had different effects on LDL or HDL cholesterol," Smith said. "We looked at the scientific literature and could not find any justifications for the statement that pasture-fed beef is better for you. All we found were rat studies in which they were fed omega-3 fatty acids, so we wanted to know if this applied to beef from grass-fed cattle."
"There really were no negative effects of feeding ground beef from the pasture-fed cattle," Smith said. "We did see many positive effects in men that consumed ground beef from corn-fed cattle. The ground beef from the USDA Prime cattle increased HDL cholesterol and LDL particle diameter. Both effects are protective against cardiovascular disease. The Prime ground beef also decreased insulin, so it may have some protective effect against type II diabetes." Read More
The biggest thing this study should provide for us is the fact that all beef is healthy for us. It doesn’t do anyone any good to vilify the type of beef our neighbor raises. It doesn’t matter what type of food you are raising, if you have to make up scary stories and spew misinformation about other products in order to promote your own, then you have a problem. All of us have preferences about what we like and don’t like but in the end we have a huge responsibility to provide food and fiber for the planet.
05/27/2010 10:49AM
COLLEGE STATION – Grass-fed beef may not have as many healthful traits as some perceive, according to results from a recent Texas AgriLife Research study.
Dr. Stephen Smith, an AgriLife Research meat scientist, and a team of researchers have found that contrary to popular perception, ground beef from pasture-fed cattle had no beneficial effects on plasma lipid.
However, high monounsaturated fat ground beef from grain-fed cattle increased HDL cholesterol, increased LDL particle diameters, and decreased insulin, suggesting that ground beef produced by intensive production practices provides “a healthful, high-quality source of protein.”
"We wanted to see from this study if product from pasture-fed and corn-fed cattle had different effects on LDL or HDL cholesterol," Smith said. "We looked at the scientific literature and could not find any justifications for the statement that pasture-fed beef is better for you. All we found were rat studies in which they were fed omega-3 fatty acids, so we wanted to know if this applied to beef from grass-fed cattle."
"There really were no negative effects of feeding ground beef from the pasture-fed cattle," Smith said. "We did see many positive effects in men that consumed ground beef from corn-fed cattle. The ground beef from the USDA Prime cattle increased HDL cholesterol and LDL particle diameter. Both effects are protective against cardiovascular disease. The Prime ground beef also decreased insulin, so it may have some protective effect against type II diabetes." Read More
The biggest thing this study should provide for us is the fact that all beef is healthy for us. It doesn’t do anyone any good to vilify the type of beef our neighbor raises. It doesn’t matter what type of food you are raising, if you have to make up scary stories and spew misinformation about other products in order to promote your own, then you have a problem. All of us have preferences about what we like and don’t like but in the end we have a huge responsibility to provide food and fiber for the planet.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Modern Ag Can Feed The World
Attention Whole Foods Shoppers
Stop obsessing about arugula. Your "sustainable" mantra -- organic, local, and slow -- is no recipe for saving the world's hungry millions.
BY ROBERT PAARLBERG MAY/JUNE 2010
From Whole Foods recyclable cloth bags to Michelle Obama's organic White House garden, modern eco-foodies are full of good intentions. We want to save the planet. Help local farmers. Fight climate change -- and childhood obesity, too. But though it's certainly a good thing to be thinking about global welfare while chopping our certified organic onions, the hope that we can help others by changing our shopping and eating habits is being wildly oversold to Western consumers. Food has become an elite preoccupation in the West, ironically, just as the most effective ways to address hunger in poor countries have fallen out of fashion.
Helping the world's poor feed themselves is no longer the rallying cry it once was. Food may be today's cause célèbre, but in the pampered West, that means trendy causes like making food "sustainable" -- in other words, organic, local, and slow. Appealing as that might sound, it is the wrong recipe for helping those who need it the most. Even our understanding of the global food problem is wrong these days, driven too much by the single issue of international prices. In April 2008, when the cost of rice for export had tripled in just six months and wheat reached its highest price in 28 years, a New York Times editorial branded this a "World Food Crisis." World Bank President Robert Zoellick warned that high food prices would be particularly damaging in poor countries, where "there is no margin for survival." Now that international rice prices are down 40 percent from their peak and wheat prices have fallen by more than half, we too quickly conclude that the crisis is over. Yet 850 million people in poor countries were chronically undernourished before the 2008 price spike, and the number is even larger now, thanks in part to last year's global recession. This is the real food crisis we face.
What's so tragic about this is that we know from experience how to fix the problem. Wherever the rural poor have gained access to improved roads, modern seeds, less expensive fertilizer, electrical power, and better schools and clinics, their productivity and their income have increased. But recent efforts to deliver such essentials have been undercut by deeply misguided (if sometimes well-meaning) advocacy against agricultural modernization and foreign aid.
In Europe and the United States, a new line of thinking has emerged in elite circles that opposes bringing improved seeds and fertilizers to traditional farmers and opposes linking those farmers more closely to international markets. Influential food writers, advocates, and celebrity restaurant owners are repeating the mantra that "sustainable food" in the future must be organic, local, and slow. But guess what: Rural Africa already has such a system, and it doesn't work. Few smallholder farmers in Africa use any synthetic chemicals, so their food is de facto organic. High transportation costs force them to purchase and sell almost all of their food locally. And food preparation is painfully slow. The result is nothing to celebrate: average income levels of only $1 a day and a one-in-three chance of being malnourished.
If we are going to get serious about solving global hunger, we need to de-romanticize our view of preindustrial food and farming. And that means learning to appreciate the modern, science-intensive, and highly capitalized agricultural system we've developed in the West. Without it, our food would be more expensive and less safe. In other words, a lot like the hunger-plagued rest of the world. Read More
This article does a nice job of highlighting how modern agriculture has the ability to wipe out hunger on this planet. While most of us take our everyday meals for granted, many people on this planet have never enjoyed that luxury. They are still farming the way we did in this country 100 years ago. The scary thing is that we have several people who have made themselves famous by advocating that the best thing the US could do is go back to farming that way. We are fortunate to provide so many choices for our consumers but the mentality that eliminating our technological advances in agriculture is the only way to go will only lead to more hungry people. ~Troy
Stop obsessing about arugula. Your "sustainable" mantra -- organic, local, and slow -- is no recipe for saving the world's hungry millions.
BY ROBERT PAARLBERG MAY/JUNE 2010
From Whole Foods recyclable cloth bags to Michelle Obama's organic White House garden, modern eco-foodies are full of good intentions. We want to save the planet. Help local farmers. Fight climate change -- and childhood obesity, too. But though it's certainly a good thing to be thinking about global welfare while chopping our certified organic onions, the hope that we can help others by changing our shopping and eating habits is being wildly oversold to Western consumers. Food has become an elite preoccupation in the West, ironically, just as the most effective ways to address hunger in poor countries have fallen out of fashion.
Helping the world's poor feed themselves is no longer the rallying cry it once was. Food may be today's cause célèbre, but in the pampered West, that means trendy causes like making food "sustainable" -- in other words, organic, local, and slow. Appealing as that might sound, it is the wrong recipe for helping those who need it the most. Even our understanding of the global food problem is wrong these days, driven too much by the single issue of international prices. In April 2008, when the cost of rice for export had tripled in just six months and wheat reached its highest price in 28 years, a New York Times editorial branded this a "World Food Crisis." World Bank President Robert Zoellick warned that high food prices would be particularly damaging in poor countries, where "there is no margin for survival." Now that international rice prices are down 40 percent from their peak and wheat prices have fallen by more than half, we too quickly conclude that the crisis is over. Yet 850 million people in poor countries were chronically undernourished before the 2008 price spike, and the number is even larger now, thanks in part to last year's global recession. This is the real food crisis we face.
What's so tragic about this is that we know from experience how to fix the problem. Wherever the rural poor have gained access to improved roads, modern seeds, less expensive fertilizer, electrical power, and better schools and clinics, their productivity and their income have increased. But recent efforts to deliver such essentials have been undercut by deeply misguided (if sometimes well-meaning) advocacy against agricultural modernization and foreign aid.
In Europe and the United States, a new line of thinking has emerged in elite circles that opposes bringing improved seeds and fertilizers to traditional farmers and opposes linking those farmers more closely to international markets. Influential food writers, advocates, and celebrity restaurant owners are repeating the mantra that "sustainable food" in the future must be organic, local, and slow. But guess what: Rural Africa already has such a system, and it doesn't work. Few smallholder farmers in Africa use any synthetic chemicals, so their food is de facto organic. High transportation costs force them to purchase and sell almost all of their food locally. And food preparation is painfully slow. The result is nothing to celebrate: average income levels of only $1 a day and a one-in-three chance of being malnourished.
If we are going to get serious about solving global hunger, we need to de-romanticize our view of preindustrial food and farming. And that means learning to appreciate the modern, science-intensive, and highly capitalized agricultural system we've developed in the West. Without it, our food would be more expensive and less safe. In other words, a lot like the hunger-plagued rest of the world. Read More
This article does a nice job of highlighting how modern agriculture has the ability to wipe out hunger on this planet. While most of us take our everyday meals for granted, many people on this planet have never enjoyed that luxury. They are still farming the way we did in this country 100 years ago. The scary thing is that we have several people who have made themselves famous by advocating that the best thing the US could do is go back to farming that way. We are fortunate to provide so many choices for our consumers but the mentality that eliminating our technological advances in agriculture is the only way to go will only lead to more hungry people. ~Troy
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